A Coca-Cola Visitor Center will still be off-limits, but an auditorium at Yosemite National Park named after Coke will now be permitted. Naming rights to roads are not up for grabs, but visitors could tour Bryce Canyon in a bus wrapped in the Michelin Man.

And parkgoers could sit on a bench named for Humana health insurance and store their food in a bear-proof locker emblazoned with the Nike swoosh.

The national park system, created a century ago to preserve the country’s natural treasures for the public, has long been a bulwark against commercialization.

But as it jockeys for donors in a more competitive environment than ever, the National Park Service is starting to tread a delicate path: making aggressive corporate appeals without giving the impression that it’s selling public spaces to the highest bidder.

Parks have long relied on philanthropy to pay for improvements, interpretive programs, trail renovations and other projects left uncovered by their operating or capital budgets. Donors got unobtrusive recognition in return — maybe a small plaque near a trail thanking them for their generosity.

But now, Director Jonathan Jarvis wants to swing open the gates of the 411 national parks, monuments and conservation areas to an unprecedented level of corporate donations, broadening who can raise money, for what and what the government will give corporate America in return.

“The great thing about the policy is it protects those features of the park that are important to all of us,” said Jeff Reinbold, the park service’s associate director for partnerships and civic engagement. “But it gives us new opportunities and new tools” to respond to donors who perceive the government as too slow to get deals done.

Jarvis proposed the expanded rules for philanthropy in March in a 33-page order that’s set to take effect by the end of the year.

The park service still won’t recognize donors with advertising or marketing slogans. But for the first time, their logos will get prominent display. Companies will be able to earmark gifts for recurring park expenses, which was prohibited before. And a company in litigation with the Interior Department, the park service’s parent agency, could now donate as long as the dispute does not involve a national park.

Bricks or paving stones on the steps to a visitor center, video screens inside, educational, interpretive, research, recreation and youth programs, positions or endowments — these also will get naming rights, according to the proposed policy. There could be walls in visitor centers dedicated to donors, or digital ones, as fundraising is beefed up through crowd-sourcing and other online strategies to reach the public.

And a donor now will be allowed to design and build a park building and even operate it in the long term.

Park officials say the shift, tested during this year’s centennial celebration, was prompted by an $11 billion backlog in maintenance projects, more or less flat funding from Congress and a need to attract young and diverse visitors that the right corporate partnerships can encourage.

“It’s about aligning (the parks and private companies) with the values of authenticity” that the park service represents, Reinbold said. “The American narrative.”

But the new brand of philanthropy is drawing fierce criticism from watchdogs and park advocates, who accuse Jarvis of embracing a creeping commercialization they say has no place in the park system.

“You could use Old Faithful to pitch Viagra,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog group that’s trying to rally the park community to fight the plan. “Or the Lincoln Memorial to plug hemorrhoid cream. Or Victoria’s Secret to plug the Statue of Liberty,”

“Every developed area in a park could become a venue for product placement,” Ruch said. Or access: “A telecom company could say, ‘Nice mountain, we’ll make a generous donations for the right of way.'”

Critics worry that corporations will now see openings to demand privileges or influence park policy the way Coca-Cola, already a major donor, did in 2011. After Jarvis started encouraging parks in 2011 to ban the sale of bottled water to save on recycling expenses, Coca-Cola, which owns Dasani Water, balked — and Jarvis stalled the ban at the Grand Canyon. It eventually went into effect.

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